Bridging the Gap
by thewordweaves
Summary: After two years of separation, the Straw Hats get to know each other again.  A series of vignettes, focusing on a few characters at a time.
1. Prologue

After the ordeal at Fishman Island is over and done with, the Strawhats have an opportunity to sit down and look at each other and the changes they've gone through, _really _look. Their giddy initial reconciliation didn't count, not really, because they were too wrapped up in their own exhilaration and pride and joy and excitement to care about anything other than the fact that they were finally back together again, back where they belonged. Two years apart was longer than they had ever spent together, but a month with Luffy was worth a lifetime with anyone else.

It wasn't as if any of them had gone a single day without thinking of the other. It didn't matter if they were secluded on an island populated with bugs shooting flesh scouring acid or traveling from island to island with legions of screaming fans, being a Strawhat just wasn't something you could forget about. They had all seen the newspapers and could only imagine the hell Luffy had gone through and what was yet to come, for they all knew the pain of loss too keenly not to recognize how it ached days, months, years later. For all of Luffy's irreverence and easy smiles, he was not the type to make the decision to part for such a long time lightly – it had hurt him as much as it hurt the rest of them.

And now they were together again, and everyone was the same but everyone was _different_. Oh, they came together like they always did. Luffy, Usopp and Chopper acted like idiots and Nami sighed and still hoarded all of their money and Franky still danced and Sanji and Zoro still fought and Brook still laughed and Robin still watched them with that implacable expression upon her face and it was as if a day had passed, not two years. But there were small things that were different. Zoro's familiar katas at the end of every day were fiercer than ever before, movements both insistent and gentle, and at the end of each routine he would look behind him as if waiting for appraisal that never came. Fishing with Franky was an altogether foreign experience, for the crew could no longer comfortably slouch into the warmth of his side, for no warmth was to be found, only sharp corners and cool metal. Sometimes, they caught Luffy sitting up on the deck, not sad, not exactly, but thoughtful in a way they had never seen before, casually trailing his fingers up and down that evil-looking scar of his.

It was the little things. But they would get to know each other again, one day at a time.


	2. Zoro and Brook

Every evening, exactly one hour after dinner, Zoro sets to doing his katas, one after the other, for a full hour. Every evening, exactly fifty minutes after dinner, Brook sits and waits for Zoro to arrive and stays seated well after Zoro finishes. Every evening, Brook sheds that feather boa of his he's so incomprehensibly fond of, sheds the glasses, sheds the ridiculous fish shaped guitar and watches intently. Zoro is used to unwanted spectators after two years of endless days and nights of Perona, and Brook is hardly unwelcome so long as he's quiet, so he ignores him.

Brook watches Zoro's every movement intently as is obvious in every miniscule twitch of his head, duly impressed. He knows that he will never match Zoro in swordsmanship, for they are two very different men with two very different goals, but this Zoro is an entirely different creature in a way only another swordsman can detect. He's ripped with muscle and badly stitched scar tissue and has hands that could quite possibly crush a man's skull with as much deadly efficiency as Franky's mechanical monstrosities, but his movements are graceful and restrained. It is as if he is dancing instead of preparing for battle, making love to the sheer artistry of his swords instead of driving them to bite into flesh and draw sticky blood from his opponents. His swordsmanship was beautiful enough two years prior, but now it contains a dark drama to its dance, for it looks as if it can transform at any moment. It is as exquisite, Brook thinks, as an aria, and more compelling than a beautiful woman (but cannot quite compete with her panties, there really is no need to get too out of hand).

It takes a week and a half of watching before Brook finally speaks, words muffled around the ever-present teacup held to his mouth. "You have improved remarkably, Zoro-san."

Zoro doesn't answer, because answering would mean a lull in his concentration, and that was unacceptable. After he is finished, however, and wipes down the sheen of sweat from off his brow with the towel he keeps there for that exact purpose, he simply says, "That was the point."

Brook chuckles in that musical way of his. "So it was, so it was."

Zoro crumples into a sitting position by the deck, swords safely tucked in his sprawl of legs and back resting firmly against the bars. Despite the fact that Brook had only sailed with them for a short time before their separation, there were changes in their musician as well. The most noticeable of which, to Zoro, was the fact that Brook no longer remained awake at night, breathing strained, to watch them sleep. It seemed that the skeleton had come to terms with the idea that upon awakening, everyone would still be there.

"Did you learn your new techniques from anyone in particular?"

"Yeah. Mihawk."

If Brook still had eyebrows, he would be raising them, but he settles for trying to tilt his head upwards in a facsimile of surprise. "The man who you are training to defeat?"

"Yeah."

"I see." Brook sets his teacup aside delicately, but manages to slosh the residual liquid inside of it all over the deck regardless. "I would like to continue watching to see if I could learn anything from your newfound skill, Zoro-san."

Zoro loops his fingers together behind his head lazily. "Sure. Were you too busy being a—" he frowns deeply, as if the very idea is incomprehensible to him, "—rock star to train?"

"I became stronger in other ways," Brook says, almost brittle in his cheeriness. "Yet I could not abide staying in one place as much of the rest of the crew had. Certainly not in solitude."

Brook impulsively picks up his teacup again and rolls it methodically between his hands, the joints of his fingers loudly thumping against the porcelain. "I met many friends over these past two years, and I am ever grateful for their assistance, yet this is truly where I belong. After all, two years is a mere blink of an eye for an old man – though I have no eyelids to blink with! Yohoho!"

"So you've been working on your music."

"Quite so! It is my job as the musician of this vessel, after all."

They sit in companionable silence for a while more, or at least what counts as silence in the company of Brook. He is insatiable in the silence, and always feels the need to fill in the gaps with sound. He finds music in the smallest of things, so that silence turns into a cacophony of soaring whistles, the tap of fingers against the planks, the subtle click of his jaws moving in time with whatever music in constantly playing in that empty skull.

Then Zoro asks, "What did you want to learn about it?"

Brook ceases his movement, momentarily surprised. "In your sword work? There was music in your movements," he explains. "You moved to a silent beat." He taps his ear, or at least, where his ear ought to be. "But I could hear it very well indeed."

Zoro nods, the smallest of smiles on his solemn face, and understanding passes between the two. "Take your sword out. Follow quickly, I'm not going to go any slower for you."

So Brook does, and the Sunny falls into a silence it has not seen since Brook's arrival, save for the swish of swords, the tapping of feet and the dance conducted to the rhythm that only those moving are privy to. 


	3. Sanji and Usopp

Chaotic didn't even begin to succinctly describe the Strawhats' first sit down meal together. Sanji had suspected that Luffy's appetite may have grown alongside his strenuous training - and he wondered, not for the first time, exactly how he managed to fill that stomach of his those two years without his trusty cook - but it pushed even his newfound skills to the limit.

The ladies were being absolutely perfect as ever, but the male members of the crew were being as obnoxious as ever. Luffy was eating everything on the table, anything that fell off the table and off of any other plate he could reach, which was all of them. Franky got it into his head that he would make a _super_ rock star but couldn't seem to remember any of the lyrics to Brook's songs, so he and the shitty skeleton just settled for happily shrieking the chorus. Chopper was shamelessly encouraging them, though Sanji suspected that he disliked the clamour but enjoyed watching Franky move his new and improved limbs all about, and Zoro was... Zoro didn't need to do anything to be annoying. He just was.

By the time the meal was winding down, all Sanji wanted was peace and quiet and a good smoke (and yes, possibly a kiss from one of the lovely ladies, but that was not currently within the realm of feasibility). But someone needed to do the dishes, and it sure as hell wasn't him. He eyed the crew for the least offensive member to accompany him to the kitchen, aside from the girls whose delicate hands weren't to be tarnished with such monotonous work, and finally scoped out Usopp, who appeared to be carrying on a thrilling conversation to himself.

"All right, shitheads!" He announced. "Dinner's over! Ladies, could I interest you in any post-dinner refreshments?"

They politely declined, though Sanji made a mental note to prepare some mild biscuits for them before bed to ensure the very sweetest of dreams, and there was a bit of a scuffle as everyone departed from the table and went back to their individual tasks. "Oi, except for you long-nose," he said, stopping Usopp in his tracks. "You're on dishwasher duty. C'mon."

"Eh? But Sanji," Usopp wheedled, "We were supposed to draw straws for the new schedule! That's not fair, get someone else to-" He turned around, and to his dismay, everyone was gone but Luffy, who was busying himself with cleaning off the last vestiges of gravy off of his plate using his tongue. The aforesaid plate looked dangerously close to breaking with the force of Luffy's tongue alone, and Usopp sighed.

Thoroughly defeated, he slunk into the kitchen behind Sanji, complaining loudly all the while about the possible things he could be doing right now (including cultivating his new pop greens in his workshop, learning more about Franky's new body, and fishing for more food for the entire crew _significant pause_). Such petty complaints were more out of habit than any wish to escape, however, and the two of them fell into a comfortable silence as Usopp washed and Sanji lovingly performed maintenance on his knives.

"I missed that," Usopp said suddenly, evidently breaking out of his silent reverie.

Sanji paused in his ministrations. "Missed it?"

"Having everyone together like that," Usopp continued with a wave of his hand, a small smile playing across his features. No matter how much the years changed him, nothing could change that impish smile of his. "It was weird, not doing that every night anymore. It's fun."

Sanji took a drag on his cigarette and tapped the ash gathering on the end into his ashtray before providing his assent through a quiet, throaty chuckle. "Try cooking for them."

"No way! That's your job. No one else is crazy enough to try to cook for Luffy on their own." Usopp fished a stray bone from out of his teeth with a nail and flicked it into his sink, then slapped his stomach. "I missed your food too!"

Sanji always asserted that the only compliments he ever needed were those of a feminine variety, but he couldn't help but feel satisfied at that particular comment. Most of the shitheads sat down and systemically and single-mindedly demolished what was on their plates without bothering to chew, but Usopp generally took the time to taste what he was eating. "They didn't feed you well over at that island you landed on?"

"Eh? No, no, nothing like that. You should have seen it, Sanji! Food grew like plants there, and it tasted amazing - oi, don't look at me like that, I'm not lying this time."

Sanji quirked a brow at him. "You landed on an island that grew food?"

"We've seen stranger things!" Once Sanji was forced to concede, Usopp went on, "I have no idea how it worked, even after all that time. It had such an amazing amount of food, but no matter how much you ate, it never ran out."

"Sounds like you got pretty lucky."

Usopp grimaced. "Lucky? No way. Everything on that island wanted to eat me, it was-" he interrupted himself to take a closer look on Sanji's face, which blatantly dared him to say that any island was worse than one without women. Admittedly, Usopp was wholly without women throughout those two years as well, but that was an entirely different creature entirely. "Okay, okay, yours was the worst. But Luffy landing on the Island of Women was definitely the - ow, okay, I won't talk about it!"

Feeling that Usopp had gotten his just punishments, Sanji placed his foot back down onto the floorboards and continued tending to his stove, his twitching eyebrow the only indicator of his ire.

"Anyway, that island's food couldn't compare to yours," Usopp continued once he finished whining over imagined hurts. He slid the last dish back into its proper place. "It was great and all, but yours tastes like..." Usopp paused to collect his words, then gestured to the kitchen as a whole. "Like this place. The Sunny."

The connotations went unsaid: _like home_. Sanji knew that power of food well, and knew that it was the highest compliment a chef could receive. No matter how expensive and high class a dish was, it could never match up to that which reminded the customer of home, and it was where each person's affections lay. There was a reason why Sanji's food tasted like home, which was that Sanji damn well made sure it did. He worked in everyone's favorite foods whenever possible, even that shitty swordsman's, because he took pride in what he did. Even after two years apart, you didn't forget about cooking for a group of people as similar as this one.

Food was an evocative force, and in every morsel, one could taste memories. Sanji still remembered that first dish that Zeff had taught him, and his subsequent trials and errors thereafter. He'd always have a special place in his heart for that dish, and these days he could make it with his eyes closed. From the expression on Usopp's face, Sanji could tell what the simple ingredients he had used for tonight's dinner reminded him of. It was just like their first meals on the Merry, elbows jostling each other in that too-warm kitchen full of upturned dishes and bright with laughter. They had hardly fit together in that tiny galley by the time they had assembled most of their crew, but their food was all the sweeter for it.

"Thanks," he said, grinning before he could catch himself.

Usopp waved it off and dried the remaining suds off his arms. "I can't remember the last time I've felt so stuffed."

"After living on an island full of _food_?" Sanji repeated critically, for though Usopp didn't share Luffy's gluttony, he was able to come pretty close for a normal human being.

Something unreadable crossed his face for a moment before Usopp grinned and tapped his nose. "Training, remember? Today was okay, though, because it was a celebration." He tossed the dishtowel behind him into the waiting laundry hamper. "I'm done. Thanks for the meal! Oh, and check with Nami after this, I think she's drawn up who's taking which watches tonight."

Sanji watched Usopp amble out of the kitchen, humming to himself as he departed, and shook his head. Though he'd never voice it, he had missed cooking for this group. Oh, it was satisfying enough feeding any hungry person, whether they be man, woman or that strange group he had met in between, but there was nothing quite like feeding this group. Even with the new strategies and techniques he had learned, it was like settling back into an old pair of shoes. Luffy liked meat, Robin liked coffee, Chopper liked sweets. Some things never changed.

Discarding his cigarette, Sanji tugged open one of the drawers with the toe of his shoe and yanked out the flour to get started on those biscuits he had been thinking about. Usually he delivered them to the girls and left a plate full in the galley for the others to find and munch on at will. Tonight, however, he thought that maybe he'd leave a couple waiting in Usopp's workshop as well. After all, among things that never changed, a man's affection for food shouldn't be one of them, training or not.


	4. Nami and Luffy

There's something lovely about watching someone else do the work for you. Nami had done everything herself ever since she was young and had never realized how spoiled she had become on this crew. Of course she worked harder here, harder than she's ever worked in her life perhaps, for the merry band of dumbasses she calls her family would die without her navigational skills. The sheer amount of physical labour that she had undergone these past two years, however, had become alien to her without a cook she could order to and fro.

Which is why she is taking particular pleasure in watching Sanji dig up plots for her weather balls now, reclining on a lawn chair and sipping at one of his marvelous concoctions. It had only taken a winsome bat of the eyes and a particularly well timed sigh for him to appear at her side, eager to help, and Nami was all too eager to be helped.

Unlike Sanji, however, Luffy has no compunction with shattering the quiet required for her designated relaxation time, and his face soon bobs into her vision, blocking out the sun. He stares openly at her for a few seconds, and Nami grumbles but allows him to stay until he starts picking his nose, at which point she swats him out of the way. "What do you want?" She asks, sounding more annoyed than she really is, because though she's still almost unbearably happy to see him, it doesn't do to spoil him.

He answers her with a question of his own. "Whatcha doing?"

Nami raises herself into a proper sitting position, still grumbling. "I _was_ relaxing before you came."

"That's boring." Luffy looks like he's about to sit next to her for a while and watch Sanji work - or perhaps try to needle Sanji into preparing some food for him or call Chopper and Usopp over so they can run around the deck some more or suddenly dart over to where Zoro is napping, because with Luffy one can never really tell - when he's distracted by the stack of weather balls beside her. "These are what you use to fight now?"

He picks up a ball that Nami knows will unleash a huge gust of wind, and she smacks him on the back of his head before he can pop it. "Leave that alone! They're not toys!"

He whines about being hit (_Nami is meeeeaaaaan_), but it seems to be more out of habit than anything else, and his gaze is oddly solemn as he looks at the weather balls. He doesn't move to touch them again, he just looks. Nami watches him, reminded suddenly of the way he snapped that he wasn't a hero, didn't want to be a hero, would never be a hero back at Fishman island. When he was goofing off, Luffy was almost impossibly childlike, all wide eyes and bright voice and expansive smiles. But when Luffy was serious, Nami has noticed, there's something almost impossibly old in him, like the heroes in the tales Usopp likes to tell when he's feeling too serious for his sillier fare. When he's angry and tilts his strawhat over his eyes, it's like some ancient force come to life, unstoppable in its fury.

Except she knows it's not unstoppable now. And so does Luffy. "They're not only for fighting," she explains. "We can use them to help us navigate the New World and to avoid some of the weirder weather."

She knows better than to explain any more than that, lest her words become dismissed as a mystery, and Luffy nods in something resembling understanding. "I wanna see!" He declares, suddenly sunny again, and Nami knows that it's not an act, because nothing he does is an act. He's not like Usopp, putting on a smile so people would just get off his case, or Chopper, who denies his happiness even when it's as clear as the nose on his face. Luffy's just able to be solemn one second and happy the next.

"I already told you they're not toys!" She snaps, exasperated.

Luffy's lower lip sticks out dangerously and he whines, "but Na_miiiii_, I wanna see! I wanna see your mystery balls!"

Which almost makes Nami choke on her straw and definitely makes Sanji turn around furiously until he appears to nearly collapse at the mental image of what Luffy's innocent words imply. "Geez, you're such a pain in the ass. Fine, I'll show you one of the buds, but only that much."

It doesn't only have to do with Luffy's request, of course, because Nami rarely does things for a single reason. A part of her wants to show off and to show the others what she can do now, that she no longer has to be a burden during those big battles.

She picks up the largest of the wind bubbles and peels off the secondary bubble growing along its edge. It's large enough to bear more fruits. She likes to be stingy with most of her supplies, but she's well acquainted with how her crops work and what can be sacrificed and what cannot. She holds it aloft in her palm right in front of Luffy and punctures its surprisingly thick skin by deftly squeezing it in her palm. A gentle breeze wafts across their area of the deck and it hits Luffy directly in his face, making him sneeze.

"Cool!" He exclaims. "I've gotta show Cho-"

She grabs him by the ear before he can begin yelling and says, "Oh no you don't, I already told you that I was only showing you one!"

Luffy pouts and crouches beside her lawn chair. The pout is quickly wiped off his face as he sits back and watches Sanji work, tilting his head to better feel the cool breeze of the New World through his hair and occasionally flicking his eyes over to where Brook stands, playing a jaunty sea shanty for their pleasure. Absently, he brings his hand up to scratch at the gnarled mass of scar tissue on his chest. The skin there has healed by now, but Nami can see how uneven and thickly it had healed - she cannot begrudge whoever it was that healed him, because it's clear that the wound he sustained was a potentially fatal one, but it does make her cringe.

Sanji whirls over and Nami placates him by thanking him and sending him on his merry way so that it's just her and Luffy, enjoying the brief respite that this clear patch of the sea affords them. She finds herself bringing her hand up to her tattoo. It's almost funny, the fact that one of her only wounds that left significant scarring is self inflicted and long since hidden under a new layer of ink, but it still itches sometimes. The doctor on Cocoyashi could never compare to the likes of Chopper, of course. Looking at Luffy now, one couldn't tell that he had suffered such a grievous loss not so long ago, but Nami knows better than to think that he's completely healed. She is intimately acquainted with the pain of loss and the ache of helplessness. In quite a lot of ways, that's not something that ever goes away. You just learn to move on and cover it up with other things. Like windmills and mikan trees, she thinks, tracing a finger around the familiar shapes.

Well, it's up to them to help cover that particular hurt up. "Hey Luffy, wait here for a second, all right?"

Luffy nods, perfectly happy listening to Brook continue his songs, which has switched to a different sailor's song with dirty enough lyrics to make a, well, a sailor blush. Luffy crows along to it and Nami steps away and descends into the girl's cabin and returns equipped with a large bottle of cream. She crouches beside Luffy, who is scratching at his scar again. It seems that whatever doctor had taken care of him only cared for Luffy's life and not his comfort.

"Stop that, you'll just make it itchier." She takes the lid off of the cream, dabs a little on her fingers and begins to spread it on with practiced hands. "Chopper gave me some of this when we left Drum Island. Don't touch it and it should feel better."

Luffy hums appreciatively and grabs at the bottle to inspect it further before beaming at her and saying, "Aaah, thanks, Nami!"

"Don't think I'm not going to charge you for using up my supply," Nami retorts with a grin.

They can't heal the scars that are already there, but they can cover it up, each and every one of them. Nami needed the permanence of ink and to carry her family with her wherever she went, but maybe these small acts of physicality are all Luffy needs, skin touching skin, a quiet reminder. _We're here._


	5. Robin and Chopper

Being onboard the Sunny once more took some adjustment for Robin. Prior to joining the Strawhats, she had spent so little time in one place that spending an entire two years traveling with Dragon's Revolutionaries felt almost unimaginably long, and it was markedly different from the atmosphere here. Here, there wasn't any of the structure that the revolutionaries boasted, for all the revolutionaries were working towards one steady goal, mere faces in a greater cause.

Here, everyone had their own goal to work towards, and it showed in the sheer pandemonium of it all. Everyone was more than capable of coming together once there was, in fact, something to come together against, but until then, all were perfectly content to go about their own business. This was a mentality wholly absent from the Revolutionaries, and Robin would not have changed it for the world. After all, she was not seeking the same goal as Dragon's folk. She could recognize that it was a noble cause in the base ideals of it, but she had lived too long in fear and strife to remain hopeful for something as large as that.

No, she deigned to stay the course of her own dream, to find True History in the midst of this crew with each of their individual, impossible dreams. As much as their antics were comforting in their familiarity, however, she eventually sought silence from the noise upon the deck. Sanji hovered over her and sweetly inquired into her health before screaming at the swordsman for making too much noise (completely ignoring the fact that he had been the source of a good half of that noise, Robin noted with some amusement), but Robin excused herself by telling him that she wished to read by the Aquarium and yes, some coffee in a half hour or so would be absolutely delightful.

As she descended the stairs into the Aquarium, her plans to sit and read quietly were cut short, for she heard a clamor coming from the infirmary. From the sounds of it, Chopper was pacing fretfully back and forth and muttering obscenities to himself as he fussed over... what? None of the crew members were ill, and there was very little to worry about. It was quite uncharacteristic of their doctor, Robin mused, for he generally preferred to work in the galley when his work was not demanding, to remain close to everyone else and to watch everybody's going-ons. She listened for a moment more, and then gently pushed the door open.

Chopper's infirmary was filled with seeds, herbs, and bags of dirt. Upon his usually pristine examining table, there were several long, large pots, ideal for cultivating herbs, and the seeds had spilled onto the floor. She sprouted a few extra arms to catch one of the pots that had come close to teetering off of the table as Chopper's horn bumped into it, and Chopper span around. "Oh! Robin!" His eyes darted to where her extra arms vanished with a burst of petals. "Ah, I must have tipped that over... thank you!"

Robin nodded, then gestured to his mess of an infirmary. "What's the matter here?"

Suddenly reminded of his previous ire, the reindeer frowned deeply. "I thought that I'd use this time to make sure I had a good supply of my new herbs. I preserved and dried a lot of them when I was in Torino Kingdom, but it won't last forever." He sighed, then confessed, "It's harder than I thought it would be."

"How so?" Asked Robin, crouching down to tidily scoop up the fallen seeds and depositing them onto the table again.

"It's the climate," Chopper explained after giving her a quick, grateful smile for her help. "All these herbs need different treatments - I should have realized that and preserved more when I had the chance! _These_ ones need the shade that the tree provided them with, _these_ ones need nutritional mulch to sustain their healing properties, _these_ ones grew at the very top of the tree closest to the sunlight..."

He blanched, then wailed, "There's no way we have the room or resources to grow all of these! But we need them! All the medical skills I learned over the last two years will be useless without them! And I'm not a gardener, I'm a doctor!"

Robin waited patiently for Chopper to finish, knowing that when he got worked up about something, it was nigh useless to attempt to intervene until he had gotten it all out. For his youth and, as a matter of fact, for being a non-human, Chopper was incredibly competent once he finished venting his frustrations.

"The solution may be less difficult than you believe," she said with a small smile, strolling over to where the bottled and dried herbs had been neatly categorized. She was not learned in the way of gardening personally, for she had never been in the same place long enough to feel the need to learn, but it was a simple enough problem. "Use the same labels that you use on your bottles to categorize the seeds. If you ask Franky or Usopp, I'm sure they can provide you with a lamp for the herbs that require sun, and Nami uses only the finest, most nutritious soils for her trees. She keeps an abundance of it in the store room."

Chopper opened his mouth, then shut it again, clearly embarrassed. "Oh," he said. "You're right. I'll ask them - _after_ I sanitize these tables again. Do you think Franky could suggest a place where I could keep all this?"

"If you ask, he may build trough for them," Robin said, interested in the herbs now that Chopper had appeared to calm down. Thankfully, she did not have to ask about them, for Chopper was all too willing to expand upon them for a fellow intellectual.

"These herbs have amazing medical properties, and they accelerate natural healing way faster than anything else I've ever seen, but only when blended together properly. The natives showed me how. They're the only ones of their kind, but I'm sure that we can somehow replicate their properties to make their salves a lot more easily."

"The natives at Torino Kingdom?" Robin questioned. She had heard of the island before in the history books of South Blue, but they had dismissed the island in a matter of sentences. It had spoken briefly upon savages that made their home there and had made it sound all in all unappealing. Adventurers that had traveled there indicated that they stayed no longer than a single day, and by all appearances, the tribe that had made its home there was marvelously segregated from much of the outside world.

Chopper blinked owlishly at her once he detected the questioning tone in her voice, as if the very idea of Robin not knowing absolutely everything about every single island in the world was a baffling one. "You don't know about Torino Kingdom?" He questioned.

"I know of it," Robin clarified, "but not in any depth."

"Oh!" Chopper slapped his forehead and bustled over to his bookshelf to yank out one of he new tomes he had brought with him. "I completely forgot. Here, Robin, I brought this for you - you would have loved the library they had there. It was huge! Most of their books were on medical procedures, but I brought the one about their history back for you. Here."

Robin accepted the proffered book with a smile. "Thank you."

"You're welcome! I thought that the natives weren't very smart when I first arrived because they only wore grass skirts, but it turns out that they just don't see the point in wearing anything else with such a steady climate," he said. "It was amazing! I assumed they didn't know anything all that time, and then I stepped into their village and they had an entire library and amazing tools."

"What sort of tools did they have?" Robin asked, sliding a chair over to sit down and listen to what Chopper had to say.

Visibly delighted at being able to actually teach someone like Robin something new, Chopper proceeded to tell her everything he could about the island, his tales punctuated with occasional sounds of sorrow and delight as he recounted his adventures. He was not as skilled a storyteller as some of the other members of their crew, but what he lacked in the smoothness of his narrative, he made up for in honesty and enthusiasm.

Chopper had grown up a great deal, Robin realized, even if his appearance in Brain Point hadn't changed a bit. He spoke with far more confidence than he once did, and when he rambled on about the different skills he had learned during his time there, he spoke with authority. Those two years had been good for him.

Sanji eventually poked his head in and dropped off that coffee that he had promised Robin with a minimum of swooning once he noticed that she and Chopper were embroiled in discussion and left them to enjoy each other's company.


	6. Franky and Brook

Franky was way too super of a guy to let a little thing like cold get him down, but he had to admit to himself that he had missed the sun. He spent most days locked up inside, puzzling over new designs by the fire. It wasn't entirely fair to say he missed the sun, of course - even on a winter island, the sun beat down as heavy as anything, reflecting off the expanse of snow and blinding all who dared go out without proper protection. But that wasn't the weather that Franky was used to. A life spent in Water 7 had prepared himself for wild variations of weather; Aqua Laguna swept in with a roaring blast of rain and wind sharp enough that it seemed that it cut through buildings like a scythe through crops, but after that came dry heat that crept insidiously up on you until you felt like it was practically writhing around in your skin. And hell, that suited Franky just fine, because no one could call him anything less than durable and it wasn't as if his moods didn't vary just as extremely as the city that housed him.

But the winter island was different. It wasn't that one, biting period of extremity, but a dull, throbbing, aching cold that beat down on you day after day. Which was why Franky gladly took the opportunity to bask in the sun while he still had it. Unlike Nami, who lounged in the sun like a cat, sprawled comfortably on the lawn or Zoro, whose only response was to nap outside instead of in, Franky chose to relax by lying flat on the deck.

His new body wasn't without its drawbacks, and one of these drawbacks was the lack of sensation. Yeah, yeah, he did a few things with nerve ends, yadda yadda yadda, but there was nothing like skin for feeling. And there was nothing like feeling the grains of the wood that made up his ship, his pride and his joy warm underneath him, as if it's as alive as only he can see it as.

Franky opened his eyes a crack when he heard the familiar footsteps of Brook coming on over, which consisted mostly of the brisk click of heels. The skeleton stared down at him, then promptly lay down beside him. Franky couldn't really figure out why, but he figured that if Brook wanted to let him know, he would.

Sure enough, after five minutes of silence, Brook finally spoke up. "Franky-san."

"Eh?"

"What are we doing?"

Somehow, Franky wasn't surprised. "We, skellie-bro," he declared, "are sunbathing."

"To tan?"

"You think a super guy like me would lie here to tan? Nah. 'Sides, synthetic skin." He pinched the skin of his chest, and it snapped against the metal that held it up.

"Ah, of course. I am in the same predicament, for I-"

"-have no skin because you're a skeleton," Franky interrupted, "we got it."

"Oh! Franky-san! You have stolen my joke! How cruel!" Brook all but screeched. After he settled down a bit (which honestly took longer than it should have for a man his age), he inquired, "Why are we sunbathing?"

"_I'm_ sunbathing 'cause it feels good and adam wood's the best for soaking up the sun. _You're_ sunbathing 'cause you wanted to join me, bro."

"Ah! I see, I see!"

Brook didn't seem at all perturbed at that and remained lying down, stiff as a plank until he seemed to get bored of that and started to play with Franky's arm, beating on the metal with bony fingers. Franky swatted him away.

"Technology," Brook said dreamily, "has come such a very long way in the past fifty years."

Franky chuckled. "I'm not exactly what you call a typical example of that - I'm way more super than anything else you've seen," he said, never one to miss an opportunity to brag about his modifications (though these days, the kids did most of that for him).

"No, no," Brook said, waving a remarkably languid hand in Franky's direction, for when Brook relaxed, he _relaxed_. "I meant technology in general, though you are indeed a fine example of that, Franky-san!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yes indeed. I have traveled many places for my tour, you see, and some cities put on rather spectacular light shows for my concerts. I have seen the world-" Brook considered this, then amended, "Parts of the world! Though I had no eyes to see it with, yohohoho!"

Franky sat up, suddenly reminded of his lingering doubts when they met back up with each other, suspicions that Brook who had always been alone would be intoxicated by his new surroundings and would part ways with them. The Strawhats were more than a family to Franky now, but he couldn't deny that there was a certain thrill to strutting around with people who would back up your every move. The kids were just fine, but it was a different tune.

Before he could think about it, he said, "Bet you could've gone all the way to Laboon with them, eh skellie?"

"Undoubtedly so," Brook said, sitting up as well. "But then one must ask, where would be the fun in that? I will meet Laboon as the musician of the Pirate King. Aside from that, I have been a pirate for a very, very long time. I do believe it's habit forming."

"Must've been nice, though."

"It was a wonderful experience," Brook said, so pensively that Franky almost felt worried about the skeleton speaking so seriously for so long until he interjected with a screech of, "All the panties my heart could ever desire - ah, though I do not have a heart! Yohohohoho! Here... there are no panties being offered."

Franky opened his mouth, but Brook continued, "Though that will never stop me from trying!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You going to go back to that? After all of this is done, y'think?"

Brook looked surprised at that question, probably because, Franky thought, he was too used to being around people who didn't think about the future. And why would they? Most of them were young, the age of thirty a distant milestone in another world. He and Brook both knew that this sort of thing didn't last forever, though it was best not to dwell on the fact.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not! Time will tell! It always does, you see. One day at a time until one runs out of time - or days."

They were quiet again - to bask in the sun once more, Franky figured, though there was no telling with this skeleton. Then he asked, "So what about these light shows?"

"Oh, they were marvelous," Brook said animatedly, flinging his hands into the air with a loud exclamation. "All sorts of different colours and shades, flashing and dancing around... I have never seen anything like that before."

"Is that it?"

Brook appeared to give this some serious thought. "I do believe so."

Franky scoffed. "You think that's impressive? That's _nothing_. Give me one day and I'd be able to make something really super! I definitely wouldn't settle for a few measly lights. There'd have to be at least five cannons."

"You don't mean to say that I would shoot my fans!"

"Nah nah that's not what I'm saying, bro! I'm saying to shoot... fireworks, or confetti to catch the lights, that sorta thing."

Brook hummed. "That would be quite a sight to see. Perhaps if I do return to the music business at any point, you could arrange that for me. And you play the guitar as well - won't you join me?"

Franky blinked, a bit stunned at the mere thought of it and touched by the kind gesture though he gathered that he hid his feelings very well by stoutly insisting that he did _not_ having something in his eye damn it, and what do you think you're looking at you damn skeleton? When he calmed down enough he grinned. "A two man show, huh?"

"I don't see why we would have to stop there! Perhaps everyone may try their hands at music. Zoro-san would make a fine, steady bassist, and Robin-san on the flute, perhaps? Usopp-san on the drums, perhaps?"

They were just dreaming now, Franky knew, but it sounded like a great time anyway. He laughed to think about the Marines' reactions to that - world famous pirates, switching careers after their greatest success to become worldwide sensations in the music industry! "Dunno if your fans would like that a whole lot, bro. Or if everyone else would if we've gotta wear the crap you do."

"They would love it!" Brook declared stoutly, and took off his feather boa to fling it around Franky's broad shoulders. "My fans are what you would call... ah... super."

"Not like that, skellie!" Franky roared. "You've gotta say it with more _oomph_ than that! _Suuuuuuper!_"

"Yes! The show would be _suuuuuuuuper_."

When Nami exited her cabin, wearily rubbing at her eyes with ink-stained fingers after she had completed her map of fishman island, she stopped at the sight that befell her. Both Brook and Franky lay out on the deck, pumping their fists and screaming _super_ at the heavens. Franky was wearing Brook's boa and oversized crown, whereas Brook seemed to have taken ownership of an eye-searingly colourful Hawaiian shirt. Nami opened her mouth to say something, then shut it.

Some things, she was certain, she just wasn't meant to understand. Today, she clearly wasn't meant to, and she simply thanked whatever deity happened to currently be listening that Brook did not feel compelled to try on one of Franky's speedos.


	7. Zoro and Usopp

When Usopp thinks of Zoro, he thinks of many things. He thinks of swords more powerful than they have any right to be, slicing through wood and rock and steel in the same way Sanji's knives fly through potatoes and onions. He thinks of a voice raised against Sanji's, yowling and snarling like stray cats, as if they're children and not two of the most powerful people Usopp's ever known. He thinks of unspoken loyalties, ripples in the water as he dives after Luffy. He thinks of the quiet smile he received after he returned to the crew, nothing like the rowdy cheers he received from the rest of the crew (and a quiet part of him still wonders at that - what does a warrior who operates solely on honour think of his shameful act?). He thinks of loud cheers, and booze, and snores that rumble the cabin every night until he feels tempted to stuff his nostrils with cotton and actually did on one occasion with Chopper's help which, in hindsight, was a truly awful idea. He also kind of thinks of algae, but that's completely Sanji's fault and Zoro will never ever know unless he eavesdrops on Usopp busting his gut at Sanji's muttered curses one day.

Those are all secondary to the main thing that comes to mind: dark, angry bloodstains against grim white bandages. That's how he's used to seeing Zoro most of the time on their journey - from the time when Mihawk's blade cut him through from shoulder to hip to whatever the hell had happened on Thriller Bark, Zoro was constantly, consistently wounded, and was still one of the strongest of them all anyway. Maybe _because_ of it, Usopp has thought more than once, because like a hero in one of those stories, Zoro never shows his back to his enemy, never cowers, never flees. That's why Usopp's used to seeing Zoro's back in battle, for he's the one who lags behind. Usopp's pretty sure that every enemy he's faced is very, very well acquainted with his back on account of the fact that his first instinct is flight, his second instinct is flight, his third instinct is flight and his instinct is only fight when he finds himself running into a wall unless he can, of course, climb that wall.

Standing up while you're injured, now _that's_ strength. It's also stupidity, like sailing out into a sea lousy with sea monsters and dangerous pirates and marines with extraordinarily strong weapons is stupid. Stupid like leaving a comfortable life and a loving wife behind is stupid. Stupid like setting out in a barrel. Stupid like allowing an assassin on your boat and asking a skeleton to join your crew upon first glance is stupid. A certain type of stupidity, Usopp has determined, is just one small part of being a man.

Except now, Usopp finds himself watching Zoro as he moves across the deck, unable to forget the way his body just gave out on him on Sabaody Archipelago. And now, Zoro looks... well, maybe not healthy 'cause his eye is missing (and frankly, Usopp's going crazy with curiosity but _nobody else is asking_ and like hell he's going to be the first to ask and sometimes he really hates the unspoken policy that people don't really talk about their pasts on this ship due to both his natural inquisitiveness and his own lack of concern for his own mundane past). But Zoro's not bandaged, he's not bloody, and Usopp's a little surprised to note that he finds it to be a bizarre sight.

One day, while he's sprawled on the deck and slurping on some fruit and vegetable juice Sanji whipped up, he watches Zoro lift weights. Which is fairly normal. What isn't normal is the way that Zoro puts down his weights after he finishes one set and finally says, "What."

Usopp looks behind him to see if there's anyone else Zoro could be talking to, but no such luck. "Huh?"

Zoro places a hand on his shoulder and rolls it. It cracks. "You keep on staring."

"Oh." Well, he's not about to say, _you see Zoro, I'm busy staring at you because it's weird seeing you not two steps away from falling apart at the joints and you collapsing two years ago really really freaked me out and I expected you to join up with us inexplicably covered with blood since that's kind of your specialty_, mostly because he happens to be very attached to his limbs, thank you very much. Instead, he says, "Uh. Your weights."

"Eh?"

"Your weights," he says, then realizes the grain of truth behind the lie. "Um, I was wondering if I could use them one day."

Zoro regards him in plain surprise, looks down at his weights, then looks at Usopp. "You want to use my weights?"

Usopp blanches. "Not _those_ ones, obviously, I'd die. I meant... you know, if you have any smaller ones. To train." And that makes sense, all of a sudden, because he needs to keep up training like Zoro does if he ever wants to keep up with the rest of them now that he's seen what they can do.

Zoro scratches the back of his head and rises to his feet, looking vaguely pleased - at least, as pleased as Zoro ever looks which in Usopp's mind is only two steps above 'mildly irritated'. "Is that all? You should've said something earlier. Yeah, I've still got some old weights. You want them now?"

"Sure."

"All right," he says and lumbers off, presumably to the weight room, a room that's gone unused since their return to the Sunny. Just like Usopp leaves the door to his workshop open these days to make sure he can hear the voices of his crewmates, Zoro seems to prefer lifting weights on the deck where he can see the entire crew go about their daily business.

He comes back carrying a small assortment of weights as easily as if he were carrying dishes back to the kitchen for washing, and carefully puts each one down so not to dent the deck and arouse Franky's ire. There was an unfortunate incident on the rails involving meat, a rumble ball and a new batch of particularly delicate explosives that riled their shipwright up the other day, and they had made the hilarious - albeit still terrifying - revelation that when Franky gets steamed up in his new body, his nose jams and his hair soon begins to resemble that of the Sunny's.

"Here," Zoro says, nods once at Usopp with approval in his eyes and sets back to work.

Right. Weights. Usopp can do this. He's gotten a lot stronger after all this time, after all, so he tentatively wraps his hand around one. "Oi, Zoro, I didn't think you had any weights this small," he notes. "How old are these?"

"I used them in my mouth."

His usual sense of curiosity suddenly curbed, Usopp hurriedly wipes it off with the fabric of his pants, because of all the things Zoro is meticulous about (training, taking care of his swords, training, training, fighting with Sanji like clockwork and training), personal hygiene isn't one of them. It's not one of his either, admittedly, but he's better at it than Zoro.

He picks it up and it starts a bit more wobbly than he'd like, but he eventually falls into what he thinks is a good rhythm. This isn't that hard, he thinks, though it does hurt. He's in the middle of wondering if it's supposed to feel like this when Zoro glides over and places his hands around each side of the weight. "Not like that."

"Eh?"

"Haven't you ever used weights before?"

Usopp blinks at him. "Why would I?"

"Because you've been training."

"Yeah,by fighting those giant plants on that island, not by using these things! Where would I even find them?" And where, for that matter, does Zoro find his? Usopp cannot imagine that weights the size of men are in high demand.

Zoro grunts and frowns, then moves Usopp's hand over to the middle of the weight. "Don't do it off to the side like that. You're not using any of the right muscles. And you'll hurt yourself. Try now. No, that's wrong. Again. Not like that. Again."

Zoro's not a gentle instructor. He frowns most of the time, and his corrections are swift and sharp. Normally Usopp would feel a bit discouraged at that after two years of Heracles' instruction, which was both enthusiastic and gentle at the same time, filled with vigor and unabashed joy and a passion for life itself. But at the same time, the fact that the swordsman is taking the time to patiently correct his form every time he puts a finger out of place - something that Heracles often did not do, for the man could be distracted by his own shadow - means that he thinks it's worth teaching Usopp how to do it properly.

By the time Usopp's through, his arms are aching like nothing else and he eyes Zoro's bigger weights with more animosity than before. He exhales, stretches. "I get it now. Thanks." He pauses as he remembers Zoro's sleeve continuously dangling in front of his face during the corrections. "Hey, that dress-robey thing - doesn't it get in the way when you're fighting?"

"It's not a dress," Zoro growls petulantly.

"Okay, okay, it's not a dress." Usopp slides onto the ground and plants his feet together. "But my question still stands, y'know."

"If it got in the way, I wouldn't wear it."

"Doesn't seem like the stuff you usually pick out, though."

"Mihawk gave it to me. He said that he was tired of looking at my old clothes."

Usopp quirks a brow at him. "Eh?"

"'Cause they were covered in sweat and blood," Zoro says, and Usopp swears that that's a cocky smile on his face, and _oh god_ that is a cocky smile on his face because of course Zoro is proud of smelling to high heaven of his exploits. Zoro sees the expression on the sharpshooter's face, and gestures at Usopp's gear. "It's not as if you're wearing the same thing either."

"Ah - yeah, I'm not." Usopp tugs at his pants. "I was stuck on that one island for a long time and my overalls were getting dirty, so I ended up sewing this after a while."

"You look like a fisherman."

"I do _not_-" He pauses to assess himself. "Okay, yeah, I guess I can see it. But I didn't mean to! I just got the crotch wrong." He frowns down at them. "And the waist, so I had to use suspenders... and I guess the legs are kinda..."

Zoro grins at him, and Usopp gets the distinct impression that he is being laughed at. "It doesn't matter what you wear anyway," he says, which is certainly true in Usopp's eyes as he is a firm believer in reasonable, useful, hardy clothing you can run and jump and climb in. Zoro gets up to walk away, but before he goes he roughly pushes Usopp's hat down over his eyes. "Do another set of reps before you go to bed if you want to improve."

"Don't tell me what to do," Usopp grumbles.

But he ends up doing it anyway, because he wants to get stronger. The Zoro with the broad back, with white bandages dappled with red, the Zoro he admired as being a man - sure, that's cool. Now that Zoro's whole and well again, though, that's not something Usopp wants to see again if he can help it. He trusts in his sniping abilities, in quick fingers and sharp eyes and a mind working at strategies as quickly as his tongue weaves enthralling lies, however sometimes one needs pure brute strength for quick, close combat situations. That, he cannot do with reliability.

The weights are a start.


	8. Sanji and Robin

In between making sure that Luffy didn't steal too much food off of everyone else's plates, getting into the occasional spat with Zoro, making sure that Luffy ate enough vegetables to go along with his meat, ensuring Chopper didn't eat enough sweets to give himself a stomachache and surreptitiously watching what each crewmate enjoyed the most, Sanji had a tendency to pay the most attention to the women of the crew while they ate.

This in and of itself was not unusual - he made sure to attend to their every need throughout the rest of the day, so why not during mealtime? Usually there wasn't anything different to note aside from ensuring that their glasses remained forever filled. Tonight, however, was a different story. Among the many dishes he had prepared for them, Sanji had prepared a warming fish stew for the crew. They had gone through a freak blizzard, and though the skies overhead were clear, most of them were chilled to the bone (as Brook took great pains to point out several times). They had finally maneuvered their way out of it with Nami's unerring guidance, but everyone was exhausted. This recipe had been taught to him in those two years expressly for the sake of warming the body up - the white, milky fish was stewed in a tomato base, thickened with coconut milk that they had picked up at a summer island they had visited, and seasoned with a liberal amount of ginger.

For all their eccentricities, the Kamabakka Kingdom's chefs were among the very best and were nothing if not exceedingly thorough. They took care to point out which certain ingredients were cooling, healing, strengthening, revitalizing, refreshing, relaxing... and in this case, warming. When Robin lifted a spoonful to her her lips, her eyebrows lifted and once she swallowed, she placed the tips of her fingers on her mouth. This was a small enough gesture, but Sanji was an attentive man, and knew that Robin rarely did anything unsolicited. Besides, Sanji was well acquainted with her expressions and delighted in watching her features change - thin lips once forced into rigidity growing relaxed with the ease of smiling and eyes once inclined to a soaring, mysterious sorrow and hard with experience growing soft with acceptance and love.

He glanced around the table to see if anyone else had similar reactions, wondering if it was in part because this was the only dish on the table that he had failed to alter beyond its original recipe, but no such luck. He leaned over the table to pour more water into her cup and asked, "Is everything to your standards, Robin-chan?" and to his credit, hardly felt the urge to rhapsodize about her, ahem, feminine attributes at all.

She said that it was with a smile, and that was that. Sanji pushed it to the back of his mind for now and made up his mind to talk to her about it later. Supper passed as it always did, with a great lot of mess and a pile of dishes in the sink for Brook to attend to, helped by Chopper seeing as his bones slipped miserably on wet, soapy dishes and ultimately culminated in more broken dishes than clean ones.

That evening, he found Robin sitting by the faint light of the Aquarium, absorbed in a large book with impossibly small text (Sanji made a quick mental note to slip some ingredients that are beneficial to eyesight into her food in the future; Robin would undoubtedly look beautiful in glasses but that didn't mean that she should have to wear them). "Pardon my interruption, Robin-chan! I have your evening coffee."

Robin looked up and accepted it, as well as the plain vanilla cake that Sanji had prepared to go with it. "Thank you, Sanji." When it became apparent that he wasn't leaving unless she openly dismissed him, she gestured for him to sit in the soft chair opposite of the bench.

Sanji leaned back in the chair and spared a glance at the bookcase upon the wall, filled to the brim with new books that the crew had collected on their individual journeys with the exception of Luffy. He snapped his eyes back to Robin - one could never be so rude as to speak to ladies without looking them in the eye first, and never should one allow his attention to waver - and crossed his legs. "You seemed to have enjoyed the fish stew this evening, Robin-chan," he said, the hint of a smile playing on his lips, forever direct in the matters of food. "Was there anything about it you particularly enjoyed?"

Robin lowered white china from her lips - and it drew such a lovely contrast to her sun-dark skin, Sanji noticed, and it nearly drew a _mellorine_ from him - and quirked a brow in faint amusement. "How observant of you. It was very good, but that wasn't what I had noticed."

"Noticed, Robin-chan?"

"Yes. I had been traveling the sea with the Revolutionaries these past two years, and their chef had made that exact dish quite often. We were restricted to quite cold climates at times and it was the only logical dish to make that they always had the ingredients for." She looked down at the coffee, which was made with Sanji's special blend and in the machine that Franky had created for that express purpose. "Which would not be so unusual if I had not already noticed that you rarely create unoriginal dishes."

"I should have expected Robin-chwan to have such a keen sense of taste," Sanji said, a bit weakly.

"All senses are integral to survival," Robin quipped, gaze as gentle as her words were hard. "Poisons lurk in the most innocuous of foods, as you know."

"But... that's odd," Sanji said with a slight frown. "As far as I know, only the chefs of Kamabakka Kingdom know their recipes."

"Our chef was an okama," Robin explained. "That shouldn't be surprising, knowing Ivankov's position, both in the Kingdom and in the Revolutionaries."

It shouldn't have been surprising. Sanji knew all that already in his head, and there was no mistaking the fact that nearly every fighter in Kamabakka Kingdom that had any sort of political clout could give him a run for his money. If he closed his eyes while fighting them, he could forget about the makeup, forget about the dresses, forget about the sickly sweet perfume and coiffed hair and feel the power that surged through them, all force and grace, legs scything through a sky tinted with orange. It was all too easy to forget the steel hidden behind broad smiles and purpose in decorated eyes. Yet it was a difficult thing to join together, this image of the okama that had trilled and preened and laughed and the very real, very potent threat the revolutionaries posed to all that got in their way.

And among them were some of the very best chefs that he ever had the distinct displeasure of meeting.

"Right," Sanji said with a nod. "They're good chefs."

"They're rare chefs," Robin said simply, then cast her gaze towards the bookshelf.

Sanji followed her line of sight and saw what had caught her attention: the new cookbook upon the shelf, filled to the brim with recipes that he had learned, each ingredient lovingly described and the sheets of loose paper carefully wedged tightly in the cracks until Sanji could place the time to transcribe them properly. "Oh - are you interested in my cookbook, Robin-chan?"

"I am."

Sanji took it from off the shelf and handed it over to Robin, who immediately set her cup of coffee safely aside. If it were one of the shitheads, he would have entreated them to be careful with the cookbook, or better yet, wouldn't let them touch it at all. But Robin of all people knew how to treat a book with respect. She leafed through a few pages at the beginning of the book, eyes trailing across the various properties of each ingredient, then closed it.

"You must be the only outsider to have access to these recipes."

"That's what I've been told," Sanji confirmed.

Robin placed her long, elegant fingers on the cover of the cookbook, then remarked quietly, "Perhaps one day, this may be the only log of it that remains."

Sanji froze. "What do you mean, Robin-chan?"

"They are revolutionaries, after all. They are underneath more scrutiny from the government than almost any other."

Robin didn't have to say anything more for Sanji to get the picture. Robin of all people knew what she was talking about. Had Sanji enjoyed his time in Kamabakka Kingdom? No! Not a chance! And yet they didn't deserve death - they were intelligent and noble in their own way, and for all his cursing and spitting in their direction, he wouldn't want them to come to any serious harm. They seemed nigh invincible in their isolation, but of course that wasn't true. Each and every one of them was in danger solely for who they affiliated themselves with, and they did so willingly as far as Sanji could tell. There were no children simply born into that lifestyle at any rate.

"Huh," Sanji said. They guarded their recipes, true enough, but in Sanji's book, recipes weren't things to keep tucked away. They were things to be shared and changed, spread amongst people so that all may receive their benefits. Food was not like sword techniques or mapping methods, to be kept close to one's chest, but a universal language of the people. He looked at the book. "Maybe I'll make a couple more copies of it, then. For safe keeping."

"For safe keeping," Robin echoed, a soft smile on her face, and approval written in her eyes. "Yes, that would be a good idea."

Sanji reached into his pocket for a carton of cigarettes, slid one out and lit it. "So, Robin-chan, did you like the revolutionaries?"

Robin appeared to consider this, then shrugged. "I neither liked nor disliked them. They had much to offer me. They were... interesting."

Sanji didn't usually pry in the affairs of the ladies, but curiosity overtook him for the moment. "Are you on their side?"

"Mm." Robin's noise of wordless amusement, elegant though it was but a murmur, rang through the room. "Perhaps I would have been once. But no - I am on the side of this crew."

And really, what could he say to that? So he settled for for maybe smiling a little too wide and raising his brows a little too high and suddenly looking like that young-faced chef on the Baratie those two long years ago, dreaming of All Blue and thrown into this crew of people he would die for instead.

The moment would almost be poignant if not for the roar of noise from above. If Sanji listened carefully he could decipher each set of footsteps - yes, that was the clatter of Chopper's hooves which grew heavier by the day, the distinctive smack of flip flops against the adam wood and the flap of Usopp's large boots. The three of them hooted and hollered and shrieked until the divine shriek of Nami's voice silenced them. Sanji could have kicked the three of them for ruining the moment, but the laugh that escaped from Robin changed his mind.

Robin stood. "If you are going to create more copies, Sanji, then you will need to learn how to bind books properly. I'll show you sometime."

Sanji all but leaped to his feet and trilled, "Of course, Robin-chan! You're so kind to offer your skills!"

He happily trailed after her, rhapsodizing on all of her wonderful characteristics until she eventually waved him off, but never forgot about their brief conversation. He was always grateful for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what was in Robin's mind, as cold and sharp as a steel trap, now fashioned to protect instead of harm


	9. Nami and Chopper

Nami sat in the crow's nest, curled up in a soft blue blanket that hung slack from her shoulders, silently thanking Franky for the hundredth time for a comfortable, warm spot to take the night watch. She was still staring pensively off into the distance when the door opened, and a furry head popped in.

"Nami," Chopper said, the cheeriness of his voice punctuated only by a faltering yawn. "I'm here to take my watch. You can go get some sleep now." He hopped up onto the chair beside Nami's.

"Ah, Chopper." Nami tore her gaze away from the sea in front of her to tap Chopper on his bare head affectionately. "Don't worry about it. The weather looks like it's acting up, so I'll stay on watch for a while longer."

"But Nami, you need your-"

"Sleep, I know. I'll have a nap when this has passed, so don't worry."

"Okay," Chopper said, appeased, then looked out to see the weather Nami was talking about. What greeted them was unlike any picture in any book that he had ever seen before. The sky gleamed a brilliant purple over the gently rolling sea, silver clouds hanging low in the distance like thin gauze to cushion the light of the stars. Wind whistled through the air with a sound as violent as the swish of a sword through the still air, cutting apart the larger clouds which parted like a curtain to reveal the different colours that swirled through the night sky, burnt orange, a dapple of pink, a brilliant green all drifting lazily through the sky like drops of paint dropped into water from a distance.

"_This_ is dangerous weather?" Chopper gasped. "How? It's so... pretty."

"Sometimes the prettiest weather is the most dangerous," Nami said, the light in Chopper's eyes forcing her to readjust her vision from that of Nami the navigator to that of Nami the woman, who appreciated beauty no matter the form. "Remember? You did live on a winter island all that time."

"Yeah," Chopper admitted, pushing his nose against the glass. "But not like this."

"Of course not. Nothing outside of the New World can be anything like this," Nami said, gesturing at the sight that greeted them as if it explained everything - and of course to her, it did.

"The New World is kind of scary," Chopper murmured in a voice so low that Nami wasn't sure whether or not she was supposed to hear it until he snapped his head over to her and added on, "But nobody anywhere else gets to see this."

"That's right," Nami said, suddenly feeling a swell of pride for their crew, the one that nobody would have thought would come together, the one that passed the tests of strife and time. More than that, she felt a swell of pride that she was the navigator they relied on, and for good reason too - two years ago, she was a damn good navigator, but now she certainly felt as if she was among the best. "That's one of the reasons we're here, isn't it?"

"Right," Chopper said, then squirmed in his seat. "If it's going to be dangerous, should I wake the others up?"

Nami shook her head. "Don't bother. It might turn violent in five minutes, but it might take five hours and they'll need their sleep. Like you. Go on, Chopper."

He nodded and disappeared out the trap door, and Nami had resigned herself to standing the rest of the watch alone when he popped back in, a tray holding two mugs balanced precariously on his antlers, now so large and strong and unlike the baby reindeer Nami had first met shivering in a too-warm bed all that time ago.

"I thought you had gone back to bed."

"I don't feel like sleeping," Chopper retorted, handing her a mug. "I want to watch the sky."

The hot cocoa was thick and far too sweet for Nami's tastes, but she thanked Chopper anyway and sipped slowly at it. Chopper had his heart set on staying, and Nami couldn't blame him - this was the first time they had seen a weather pattern like this, and a part of her was glad to share it with another. She sent a glance his way, then wrapped her blanket around the both of them.

"Some of the other pirates called the first half of the Grand Line paradise after they came here," Chopper said.

Nami knew that they were probably right. She had done a lot of research on the weather patterns of the New World in hopes of securing her crew's safety from the elements, but had learned that there were very few patterns _to_ learn - you had to rely on your own wits and skill half the time and get used to thinking on the spot. Her fingers played with the frayed ends of their blanket. "I heard. Think they were right?"

Chopper hesitated, then said, "I thought so for a little while. Do you know how many new diseases are out here, unique to every island?" His eyes followed the path of one cloud as a gust of wind blew it across the sky. "But this doesn't look like hell to me. What's going to happen?"

"Probably a wind-storm," Nami said. "There's definitely some lightning on the way too, depending on which way we end up going."

Chopper shivered a little, though Nami couldn't tell whether it was in fear or anticipation. He took a deep breath, as if summoning up his courage and then declared, "I'm glad we're here anyway."

"Me too," Nami smiled, then pointed into the distance. "Look! The sun's come up early."

In another hour, Sanji would rise to begin preparing breakfast. Brook would probably wake up next to rouse the ship with song, much to the chagrin of everyone else, and then the ship would burst into loud activity, but for now it was silent and beautiful.

Nami leaned against Chopper, and they watched the sun rise.


End file.
